An old college buddy of mine showed he was a lot braver than me years ago when he ventured to the Northern section of our great country after we both finished our journalism studies.

My friend was always up for any challenge and moving to Minnesota after being a lifelong Southerner didn’t seem to faze him in the least. In fact, he relished the challenge.

“I look forward to battling the winters up North,” I remember him telling me during the early summer of 1993. “Cold is cold, no matter where it is.”

I remember trying to tell my friend he really didn’t know what he was in for. However, being young, eager and full of ambition he made the move north. In fact, it was about as far north as you could go and still be in our country as the newspaper he went to was less than an hour from the Canadian border.

Meanwhile I set up shop here in Georgia at a now defunct newspaper based out of Morgan County and only had to deal with what winter brought us in the Peach State. We exchanged letters (in the pre e-mail days) and newspapers and as winter approached I began to wonder if my college classmate was still eager to be living in the frozen wasteland I was constantly kidding him about.

My friend didn’t let on but I could tell by the tone of his letters that it was already taking its toll on him, even before the true brutal aspects of a Minnesota winter arrived.

As it turned out my friend actually survived two Minnesota winters before he called it quits and moved to Florida, where he lived for several years before moving back to South Georgia. As it happened, the winter played a much bigger role in driving him back South than anything.

“You just can’t imagine what it was like,” my friend said.

Of course, I told him I really didn’t want to imagine it. Winter in the South was rough enough for me.

My friend talked of his car never wanting to run despite several new batteries and how he never got the hang of those below zero wind chills.

“During those horrible mornings you began to question your sanity,” my friend said. “What am I doing here? Why did I move here? How much longer can I take it?”

The work my friend did was something he said he actually enjoyed as he was able to help oversee the high school sports beat. However, the winter months were just more than he could handle and he couldn’t stand the thoughts of doing it for a third year.

I thought about my old college colleague this weekend when the weather approached 70 degrees here in our neck of the woods. While we’ve battled some bad conditions for our parts in recent weeks, you can’t beat having weather like we did this past weekend. It makes you glad to live in the South.

In fact I sent my friend a Facebook message Sunday night with the header reading “Minnesota.” He responded with a “NO!!!!” and agreed if he never saw the confines of that state again it would be just fine.

As we count down the days to spring (high school baseball season is in fact just around the corner), I feel for my fellow Americans stuck up North. I know you can handle what you are used to but how in the world anyone can get used to a frozen existence is beyond me.

“You never warmed up, even when you were inside,” my friend related of his time in Minnesota. “It’s like you lived in your freezer. The people were nice and the job was good but that weather...”

His words were not fit for print here.

Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at cbridges@barrowjournal.com.

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